Johannesburg | Wednesday
THE salary strike by state attorneys enters its third day on Wednesday with the Justice Department claiming it could do nothing to meet their demands.
Justice representative Kaiser Kganyago said the department did not determine salaries and that the decision was made by the public service bargaining council.
”They declared a dispute against the department, but we maintain the dispute was declared against the wrong people. We have no jurisdiction to discuss salaries with them,” Kganyago said.
A committee was set up early this year to investigate the salaries of all Justice Department officials.
”We acknowledge their salaries are not on par with those of their counterparts in the private sector. There is a problem. But that is why the committee was set up.”
More than 100 out of a total of about 250 state attorneys had gone on strike since Monday.
Most of the rest were on a go-slow.
The department on Tuesday was assessing whether it needed to hire private lawyers to represent the State in pending court cases.
”We have instructed all our offices to determine whether there are urgent cases which will need us to assign private lawyers. This will obviously cost us money, but we are prepared to do it because we don’t want the public to suffer as a result of the strike,” Kganyago said.
Less urgent cases would be postponed to later dates.
Louwrens said a 100% stay-away was reported in Bloemfontein. In Cape Town 14 of a total of 16 state attorneys were on strike, as were 23 out of 31 in Johannesburg.
State attorneys in Durban were to have decided on Monday whether to join the strike, but he had not yet received further information from them, Louwrens said.
They were at work on Monday, but had refused to accept new cases.
Kganyago said the strike would have no visible impact. ”We should be able to postpone most of our cases, and the courts are running as normal.”
Louwrens said the strike was set to continue until at least Friday, unless the department came up with proposals for its resolution.
The labour action would be reviewed on Friday to determine if it should go ahead.
Kganyago stressed that a principle of ”no work no pay” would apply to striking workers. – Sapa